Some ideas won’t die, no matter how bad they are.
Two years ago Mayor Jorge O. Elorza floated a plan to create a new state-supported water-supply board that would pay the city for access to the water it owns and sells to retail and wholesale customers across the state.
The proposal was designed to help Providence handle its more than $2 billion in pension and other post-employment benefit unfunded liabilities.
The idea was rejected by the General Assembly because it was an obvious form of taxation without representation.
Why? Because while the city government would be collecting money to pay down its ill-advised promises to employees, the water system would still have to be operated. Thus, ratepayers from across the state would be making payments to cover both costs, in effect paying taxes to support a government they had no hand in electing.
The current plan is slightly different in that it only mentions helping to pay down pension obligations and it involves an outside operator taking over the water-supply operation. But the idea is still the same, and just as it was in 2017, it deserves to be rejected.
Former Providence Mayor Angel Taveras tried to bring the city’s pension obligations in line at the same time that then-General Treasurer Gina M. Raimondo was doing the difficult work of righting the state’s pension ship. But he did not do enough.
It is time for Mayor Elorza to start the very difficult work of bringing the city’s long-term obligations under control. He should stop trying to make the rest of the state pay for the city’s mistakes.
